Interesting articles about VR – week #10

A Virtual Reality Documentary Sheds Light on Mental Illness

When Francis, a teacher from the African nation of Ghana, suffered a mental health crisis, his family and friends didn’t know how to help. In his small village, they only knew of one solution: to lock him away until his madness subsided.

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How virtual reality is changing engineering

Far from being a technology of the future, virtual reality is now well established in multiple industries and sectors, ranging from entertainment, communications and education to design, scientific research and defence. Professor Anthony Steed, from the Virtual Environments and Computer Graphics group at UCL, explores how three companies are using immersive technologies to transform their engineering processes.

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Patagonia and Google look to defend public lands with stunning VR film series

The Bears Ears region in southeastern Utah has many claims to fame. It’s the sacred home to five Native American tribes, a popular spot for rock climbers and outdoor enthusiasts from around the U.S., and the location of tens of thousands of archaeological sites.

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Augmented reality: The Future of Virtual Technology

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are the hot trending talk in the tech ecosystem. TechGiants are promising advancement and investors are gushing capital into the place. Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. Internet Giant, Google has been showcasing its G-Glass since 2012 and continues to invest in Glass, contrary to widespread belief. Microsoft, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony have proclaimed their own smart glasses. Nearly every major TechGiants in Silicon Valley invested in Magic Leap, and the emerging players such as Atheer, Recon, Vuzix, Epson, Meta, Optinvent, ODG, and others are also developing smart glasses. The Space is on fire.

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100 demos, 50 pitches, and a year with AR and VR: What we’ve learned

We received our first market-ready VR headset at Madrona almost one year ago now, and since then, we have done VR (Vive and Rift) and AR (HoloLens) demos for over 100 people who have stopped by our office to check out the next big computing platform. We have done demos for kids, parents, grandparents, pro football players, elected officials, company executives, gaming enthusiasts, people who never game, and people all over the spectrum from skeptical to extremely excited about VR. We have also participated in over 50 unique VR/AR demos from companies pitching Madrona.

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Valve, SMI and Tobii Preview VR’s Eye Tracking Future In HTC Vive

Over the last week we learned that by spending essentially $300 to purchase three Vive Trackers, you will be able to bring your legs, feet and torso into VR — so you can kick a dinosaur in the face without even looking at it. Dinosaur kicking for $300 is certainly funny, but it’s also a great example of a broad effort by developers and hardware manufacturers to make virtual worlds more responsive to human behavior. Another is more robust hand and finger tracking, so the incredible variety of quick and precise movements in your hands are accurately represented in a virtual world. Still another example is eye tracking, and we’ve seen demonstrations from both Tobii and SMI in the HTC Vive offering a glimpse of how much better future VR systems will be at understanding our behavior.

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Zero Latency 2.0: New Levels In Virtual Reality

When I tried it in mid-2015, I was blown away by Zero Latency’s immersive virtual reality — completely wireless, free roaming, warehouse-sized VR, built in Melbourne. Almost two years on, the fundamentals are the same, but the Zero Latency experience is more refined than it has ever been. And that means new things are possible.

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Deus Ex director Warren Spector has harsh words for virtual reality and more

Today at the Game Developers Conference, industry heavyweight Warren Spector hosted a post mortem on the making of Deus Ex, arguably his most beloved game. While Spector’s talk featured a lot of insights into the lengthy development process for Deus Ex and what he did right and wrong, he also offered some thoughts on current game development trends, often in response to audience questions.

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5 Steve Jobs Methods to Avoid VR’s Failure in 2017

Last week, I was inspired to find ways to make VR mainstream after reading Cody Brown’s article on Oculus’ failure to sell VR. The Best Buy poster made me reflect on which Oculus advertisements I remember best. There’s two:
The fake-looking butterfly photo
The woman in a headset staring at an Intel logo

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The Mill’s incredible Blackbird at GDC : The future of Virtual Production

Filming cars was never going to be same again, after The Mill introduced the Blackbird. Their car invention was truly an incredible cutting edge production tool. It addressed a fundamental problem: automotive car availability on location. But when filming with the Blackbird, the problem was trying to make decisions creatively without the actual target car visible on set…

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